“And now,” said the governor, “before we send for the prisoners it will be as well to decide on the sentence. What does his excellency wish done to them?”
The idle man was puzzled. How could he offer an opinion, being ignorant of the Egyptian civil code? and how could the sentence be decided upon before the trial?
The governor smiled serenely.
“But,” he said, “this is the trial.”
Being an Englishman, it necessarily cost the idle man an effort to realize the full force of this explanation—an explanation which, in its sublime simplicity, epitomized the whole system of the judicial administration of Egyptian law. He hastened, however, to explain that he cherished no resentment against the culprit or the villagers, and that his only wish was to frighten them into a due respect for travelers in general.
The governor hereupon invited the mudîr to suggest a sentence; and the mudîr—taking into consideration, as he said, his excellency’s lenient disposition—proposed to award to the fourteen innocent men one month’s imprisonment each; and to the real offender two month’s imprisonment, with a hundred and fifty blows of the bastinado.
Shocked at the mere idea of such a sentence, the idle man declared that he must have the innocent set at liberty; but consented that the culprit, for the sake of example, should be sentenced to the one hundred and fifty blows—the punishment to be remitted after the first few strokes had been dealt. Word was now given for the prisoners to be brought in.
The jailer marched first, followed by two soldiers. Then came the fifteen prisoners—I am ashamed to write it!—chained neck to neck, in single file.
One can imagine how the idle man felt at this moment.
Sentence being pronounced, the fourteen looked as if they could hardly believe their ears; while the fifteenth, though condemned to his one hundred and fifty strokes (“seventy-five to each foot,” specified the governor), was overjoyed to be let off so easily.